Gilded Cage
by BanishedOne
Summary: 'I'm not implying that you have sex with another man,' she explained, 'I meant for you to merely explore another man's body as a means of stifling your feelings of awkwardness.' ZeldaGhirahim/HyliaGhirahim


"How long has it been?"

"Hm..?"

"..-since Demise was defeated, I mean."

"..Oh...almost five years, I think. Maybe a bit longer.."

"You're satisfied here, aren't you? You're settled here, in Hyrule Village, even though it's still small.. you're happy, right?"

"Of course. ..being thought of as royalty because I was Hylia in a past life took some getting used to, but.. I'm satisfied. The surface land is beautiful and I was happy to explore it by your side, Link. I'm happy with my life here, as the Princess of Hyrule. It's everything I've ever wanted."

"...well, is it really..-everything-?"

"What are you getting at?"

"...Zelda.. I'm done adventuring. I want to be here with you and stay with you forever."

"Link?"

"..please, marry me, Zelda?"

::

_/...and that was how this entire ordeal began.../_

:: ::

'..You almost blew it with Link. The look on his face was utterly pitiful. How could you leave that boy hanging like that..?'

The young woman sighed in aggravation as she laid in her bed, greeting another lovely morning in Hyrule Village as the golden sun poured into her window, and down onto the plush surface of her bedsheets. She was greeted, as well, by the inescapable divinity within her, a voice that only she could hear, already badgering her over yesterdays happenings while her nerves were still taut over everything.

"Maybe if I didn't have you adding commentary to everything, I could think straight for a change. It isn't like I enjoy always appearing distracted amidst every important event in my life!"

Zelda, despite being considered divinity by her people, and being unthreatened by any lingering dark forces, led quite a troubled existence. She'd been too embarrassed to speak of her problem to anybody and she knew better than to assume that it could be remedied, but..

...ever since her life began to change those five years ago, she'd been hearing this soft, distant voice, whispering to her in her head. Now, that whisper had grown into a firm, distinct voice, a consciousness, one which lived inside of her mind, yet was different from herself. This other person spoke to Zelda constantly, and though the other consciousness certainly wasn't evil, it got rather mentally stressful for the young Princess, never being alone in her own head.

The voice itself belonged to the trace existence of the Goddess Hylia, who had awakened within Zelda, yet somehow grew sentient, separately from her.

'..I was just trying to help. You were standing there like a mute while that boy eyed you with those big, pitiful, blue eyes of his. He looked like he might break if you didn't answer him!'

"I was trying to think about my answer. You were just screaming, 'Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!' over and over."

'What is there to think about? You've been in love with that boy forever.'

"..Well..." She sighed, unsure of her answer, even now, despite that she'd given one to Link already. She wished so desperately that she could get in touch with her younger self; she could recall pretending to be married to her near-silent friend when they were kids, and how she would insist that her dolls were their babies, and how she would always surprise her friend with little kisses on the cheek that always had him blushing in embarrassment.

But she had been so innocent at that time. No child really understood what it meant to be married or to have children, or anything at all about being an adult; and while children could exchange chaste kisses now and again, they truly never considered what these gestures of affection escalated to.

Zelda laid back in her bed, contemplating the thing that both incited her passion and left her terrified at the very same time. It wasn't as if she hadn't mused on intimacy, or that she hadn't wondered what it could be like between herself and Link, but.. that didn't mean she had any idea how to handle it! She'd caught herself gazing at her friend during their travels, wondering what his body looked like underneath his Knight garments, and what he would _feel_ like against her, but..

..no amount of daydreaming could prepare her for this! She wanted things to be perfect and if she acted like some shy schoolgirl without any clear concept on what to even do with a man.. It would just be terrible! ...Link already probably thought Zelda had agreed to marry him simply because he was the only one truly available; what if she left him thinking that she found him undesirable just because she herself was a complete moron!

She was bound to be a completely awkward, disappointing excuse for a bride. In sudden panic, she flung her frail hands over her face, and kicked at the sheets beneath her tiny feet in frustration.

'Would you just -calm down-?,' a sudden voice intervened.

"How can I just calm down?," the girl hissed back, not really sparing any regard for whether or not the voice in her head was that of a holy deity. As far as she was concerned, the Goddess had no business interfering with her mortal dilemmas, because she couldn't even understand them. (Or so Zelda assumed.)

'Trust me, boys have instincts, he'll know exactly what to do,' came Hylia's voice in a rather nonchalant tone.

"That's not really what I'm worried about. It's -my- performance that concerns me. I don't want to just lay there like an imbecile the entire time," she explained, a horrid image in her head of Link looking down on her, mid-penetration, with that exact sad look in his eyes that he had when she didn't immediately answer him after he proposed. It was an absolute nightmare.

'..if I might make a suggestion?,' came the calm voice from the back of Zelda's mind; the Princess sighed, somehow knowing that this was going to be troublesome.

"What?," she groaned.

'..if you're so worried about your performance, why not simply educate yourself beforehand? Practice.'

"W-what?," Zelda sat upright in her bed in shock. She assumed that she just hadn't quite heard Hylia's suggestion clearly, because if she had heard her correctly, she was absolutely appalled. Was the Goddess trying to suggest that she have sex with another man? The blonde-haired girl placed one delicate hand over her pink lips to stifle a gasp of utter disgust. How could Hylia propose such a thing? It was morally wrong for her to even consider such a deed, as well as the fact that she was meant to be pure until the time that she laid with her betrothed.

'I'm not implying that you have sex with another man,' Hylia explained with as much patience as she could muster. She still sounded as if she were dealing with an unruly child. 'I meant for you to merely explore another man's body as a means of stifling your feelings of awkwardness. Experiment, but only for the sake of gaining knowledge.'

Shaking her head, still thinking this was the most outrageous thing she'd ever heard, and not knowing why she even decided to bother responding, Zelda posed the most obvious question. "..and who exactly am I meant to experiment on?"

'..Why don't you get out of bed, throw on a robe, and I'll show you.'

A single, delicate, blonde eyebrow was quirked in bemused curiosity. Hylia actually had somebody in mind already? Zelda, if only in complete intrigue at the Goddess's outlandish behavior, crawled from her bed and wrapped her thin, graceful frame in a lovely, silken robe adorned with the Hylian Crest. The white, lacy trim of her night grown hung out from beneath it, fluttering just above her ankles as she walked.

"..Lead the way," Zelda uttered quietly, relinquishing control of her body to the other being that resided within her. It was not often that she allowed Hylia to take over, but for the sake of simply being led somewhere, Zelda didn't mind idly observing while her legs moved on their own.

The young woman observed in silence as she was guided through the castle in which she lived; it was a magnificent structure, but it was also shared by many people other than herself. Zelda hadn't imagined that she'd ever live in such a lavishly constructed manor, but the fortitude of the walls were more for her safety as the incarnation of Hylia, and the luxurious space within was to keep her content while she was effectively closed off from the world. She'd previously been exploring the surface without much of a worry at the side of her greatest protector, so now being cooped up was something of a shock.

But, regardless of her wandering tendencies, there were many areas of the castle that she, herself, had not explored. Many halls and entrances were only known to the Shiekah people that had turned up one day and pledged themselves to her, in service. There were quarters for all that lived in the castle, but most were tucked neatly away, so to not become an eyesore. Others were tucked away out sheer necessity, such as the guarded alter where the sacred Triforce had been vaulted away. Then, lastly, there were deeper quarters buried beneath the castle; this was certainly a secret that the young maiden was unaware of.

A spiral staircase that descended into the deepest, dankest depths beneath the castle had been cleverly tucked outside of any main halls or foyers. The air was cold, and the echo of wetness dripping down the stone walls resounded up from the belly of the basement below. The young woman was not terribly frightened, but she was almost entirely confused.

"..what is this place?," she asked the all-knowing deity that resided within her mind; her voice laden heavily with trepidation.

'It's a detention facility.'

"This is a prison?," Zelda bitterly shook her head in disgust. "No, it's even worse than that! It's a dungeon!"

'Not quite. The people of Hyrule Village don't cause enough stir for anyone to ever be imprisoned here for life. It serves as a place to temporarily contain anybody who has made waves until things are straightened out. The atmosphere gives people good incentive to think twice before acting on any malicious or petty urges.'

"...I had no idea this was even here," the young woman uttered, her crystalline eyes flickering about the murky darkness with worry.

'There is only one single prisoner who is held down here indefinitely.'

"What? There's _actually_ somebody down here who will never be allowed out, until the day he dies..?," again, Zelda was shaking her head, her heart heavily burdened by her compassionate nature. "That's...so cruel."

Hylia wisely chose to say nothing more to her troubled, naive incarnation. She might have commented on cruelty being merely the deserved fate of some creatures, or she might have decided to correct Zelda on the 'here until the day he dies' comment, because that was wholly inaccurate. Hylia had meant precisely what she stated- This prisoner was to be here indefinitely.

But, instead of wasting her time in explanation, she simply continued down into the final corridor at the lowest level of the facility. There were many a heavy door enclosing this final hallway, serving as an extended gateway to the one and only cell on the level. Even though this particular prisoner had been _relieved_ of any magical abilities he might have once had, he was still quite securely imprisoned, regardless.

After unlocking and bypassing several gates, and reassuring Zelda that everything would be 'alright', Hylia at last came upon the final door before the actual cell where the prisoner was contained. Here, she halted, intent on addressing Zelda's grasp of the situation, now that she'd gotten her this far.

'Listen to me closely. The one who is imprisoned here is bound quite securely and any powers he once had have been stripped from him. For that reason, I'm certain that he poses very little threat to you and I, should you remain attentive and cautious. Just don't give him an inch, or he may seize the opportunity to make himself a dangerous threat.'

"I thought you said that this would be 'alright'?," the young woman uttered, indirectly accusing the voice in her mind of deceiving her and now leading her into peril. Honestly, the ideas that mortals had about the Goddess were so horribly inaccurate, it was almost comical.

A sigh escaped from the young spirit maiden's lungs; the expression of exasperation had been Hylia's doing, however. 'Just do as I say, and everything will be alright,' these words were not any kind of reassurance, because they came out as a stern demand, which Zelda grumbled in response to.

Zelda didn't know -why- she chose to listen to the Goddess's demands; maybe it was _because_ she was the Goddess. Maybe it was because Zelda, herself, was curious, but she was also familiar with an expression that had something to do with a curious Remlit meeting an untimely demise. With a nervous gulp, Zelda reached out, and laid her dainty hands upon the locking mechanism. The device was heavy and difficult for her to shift, but she managed to open the lock which let out a harsh, metallic groan.

Carefully, the blonde girl allowed the cell-door to be opened; she cracked it at first, as if she expected some sort of monster to rush through at the first opportunity for escape, then finally she tugged the heavy door fully open. A loud creak echoed throughout the hallway, reverberating up from the deep depths of this particular catacomb and it gave Zelda a chill of nervousness to add to the gooseflesh caused by the cold; she had this sneaky feeling that everybody in the castle above could hear this door opening, and planned to rush down, assuming the supposedly dangerous prisoner was escaping.

(Strangely enough, though Zelda was considered royalty and divinity, she still held this strange notion in the back of her mind that she was sure to get into trouble for this.)

In slow succession, the soft click of the girl's slippers resounded quite audibly in the otherwise silent darkness; she'd taken three steps into the room, just enough so that the pure lightlessness of the underground cell had consumed her, hiding her away from the candlelight of the hallways, when suddenly a handful of lanterns flickered to life.

Ghostly, blue flame hissed to life within glassed prisons that hung upon the wall, illuminating the cell in response to sudden activity; surely it was one type of enchantment or another. Regardless, it had almost, almost startled Zelda enough to have her reeling backward.

The only reason that the blonde girl had not bolted was because, thanks to the dull, blue glow of the lanterns, she now laid her eyes directly on the prisoner who'd been locked down in this lightless hell, and her eyes were plastered to the image before her, her legs trembling, though her feet felt to be rooted to the very stone beneath them.

A few paces in front of Zelda was a tall, upright figure, bound in chains so securely that he could not move an inch, even if he desired to do so. His wrists were shackled, and stretched high above his head, so that he almost appeared to dangle from the chains like a forgotten puppet, hanging by its strings; only the very tips of his toes touched the ground, so that he could not stand comfortably on the soles of his feet, and was forced to either allow the pressure of his weight to remain held up by his toes, lest he merely be suspended by his arms. At this particular moment, the prisoner indeed had allowed himself to simply dangle, his bound frame so incredibly still that the girl paying witness to this astounding cruelty thought surely this man was dead. He was just too still, more motionless than any living being could ever possibly be.

Zelda placed a delicate hand over her gaping mouth, while her other hand unconsciously held her middle as a sickened feeling erupted in the pit of her stomach. The way this prisoner's head hung forward, seeming as though his neck was either boneless or broken, and his chin firmly pressed into his collarbones, he just couldn't be alive..

Who could do this to a person? Who could stand for this kind of horrid torture? Zelda's kind heart felt to be shattering at this horrid vision, her morality burdened in knowing that this had been happening beneath her feet all this time.

"This is so wrong," the girl mumbled in a trembling tone of sheer lament. All Zelda wanted to do was run away, which is why Hylia took the initiative to push the girl a few steps nearer.

Zelda's fearful gaze could not be torn from the sight of the dangling form as her body moved toward the prisoner without her consent; she gaped at him, not out of any desire to do so, but simply because she couldn't move her line of sight away. Inwardly, she begged Hylia to stop, truly afraid that the Goddess had it in mind to force Zelda to touch him, or some such other morbid thing. However, as she was just outside arm's reach of the bound creature, the Goddess released her, and she came to a halt.

..and then the blonde girl heard the softest noise. It was slow and rhythmic, but so faint that she almost had to hold her breath in order to hear it; it was the sound of his breathing. Her eyes raised to peer at the prisoner's chest, seeing that it was gently rising and falling in time with the sound of his breath. It came so slowly, so weak that it seemed the bound male was in the deepest of sleeps.

Zelda calmed, if only subtly, knowing that the chained prisoner was alive and because he'd yet to respond to her presence. She watched him in the flicker of the lantern light, taking in the threadbare state of his ragged clothing. The material that tightly bound his frame was ragged and dingy, covered in tears and spattered with blood and dirt, as if he'd engaged in some horrid struggle before being locked away here.

The young woman's eyes were slowly adjusting to the low light of the cell as she studied the poor, tormented creature before her. Surely nobody deserved this kind of treatment- that's what she was thinking as she took the tiniest baby-step nearer to the prisoner, her nervousness suddenly softened by the weight of her pity. A delicate hand raised, her fingertips reaching out to the one hanging piteously before her; her hand extended toward the obscuring curtain of tangled hair hanging in the prisoner's face, touching it, feeling the disheveled locks and how terribly they needed care.

Zelda didn't really know what she was thinking; she pushed the hair back from the prisoner's face, thinking maybe this mysterious person would look up at her in a way that was morose and contrite, and bid that she pardon him for whatever horrid crime had gotten him placed in this awful position. Then, perhaps she could act in stead of the forgiving goddess, and take the initiative to release this man from his suffering.

However, none of this ever occurred; the prisoner did not stir for a moment as he was touched, and it took but a second of observation for the Princess to notice the familiarity of the face she found. It came first with the recognizable diamond-shaped stamp upon his cheek, before the rest of his features sparked the trace of recall in Zelda's mind, suddenly reminding her of that horrible time when this man, no.. -monster-, this _monster_ attacked her and her friends, tearing her away, and ripping her soul from her body, casting it into darkness that her betrothed had rescued her from.

Zelda stumbled back in utter panic, terror consuming her in a flash, and if anybody had been about to see her reaction, they might have thought the moment of physical contact had caused her pain of some sort. But no, it was plain fear that consumed her, and it jarred her off balance, so that she landed harshly on the floor in a heap and continued her backward pitch, crawling away like a terrified mouse.

She prayed in her mind that he did not wake as her back found a wall, and she used it to pull herself back up onto the narrow, unsteady pillars of her legs. She interrupted her own inward prayers with spiteful reminders that there was nobody for her to even consider praying to, and she turned her thoughts bitterly to Hylia, screaming in bewildered fury, 'Why did you bring me here? What were you thinking?'

'Calm down!,' the Goddess responded, 'There's no reason for you to panic! His magical abilities were stripped and his movement is restricted. He can't do anything to harm you. He is hardly a thing to fear now.'

Hylia's words were only enough comfort to help Zelda find it in herself to turn her back to this monster, so that she may bolt from the cell and slam the door shut behind her, locking it back securely as she raced from the dungeon, discarding whatever insane notion had brought her here in the first place.

:: ::

/..tbc../

::

_[Just a quick note: For all of you younger, impressionable girls out there, PLEASE do not take the actions of Princess Zelda in this fanfiction to heart. I don't want you all to think that it is of such vast importance to understand the male body as a necessity for intimacy. Don't start thinking that it is your job to make sure any man is 'pleased'. Partners should care equally for each other's pleasure. Just wanted to put that out there._

_With that aside, what did you all think? Like it? Hate it? Anything?]_


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